Exclusive: Listen to Old Crow Medicine Show's Civil War Anniversary Song

For the past 15 years, Old Crow Medicine Show has made its name performing old-time bluegrass music. Or as singer Ketch Secor says, "recreating traditional music and more or less retooling it for listeners today." So when the opportunity presented itself for the Nashville-based string band to contribute to Divided & United — a 150th-anniversary collection of Civil War-era music reinterpreted by contemporary artists including Loretta Lynn, Jamey Johnson, and Steve Earle — they jumped at it. The prospect was personally appealing, Secor explained, because he and bandmate Critter Fuqua grew up in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, the sort of Southern town where shopping malls are named after Civil War battlefields and high schools after its generals. "The echo of the war could still be heard there 150 years later," he says.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

The song that most attracted Old Crow's attention was "Marching Through Georgia," which Old Crow covered for the album (due in November via ATO Records), and which you can now exclusively listen to here. The dual nature of the legendary Yankee anthem — the front end's somber lament and the second half's hootenanny hoedown — was what first caught the frontman's ear. And, he adds, while the song was first sung over a century ago, its message remains highly relevant.

Most Popular

"The need for songs about war won't rest," he says, "until we're done putting human beings into crosshairs."